Here's the problem…

This duplicates, in many instances, Basecamp’s look and functionality. The team at 37signals has worked hard to develop their product. While I support open source software and love WordPress, I do not condone stealing someone’s hard work and giving it away for free. That’s not the spirit of open source, that’s not the spirit of WordPress, and it’s just not cool. If you want to make a positive contribution to the community, don’t just copy Basecamp — come up with something different and allow it to grow naturally through open source.

Sad to see negative comments. WP Project Manager is one of the best WordPress plugins I have ever used. User interface is just awesome and there is nothing wrong in getting inspired from existing product or plugin. Good work Tareq.

There isn’t a difference in this case, @j0schi. The team at 37signals paid their designers and developers to build a product, spent money and resources on UX research, and created a product for which they charge a premium price. It’s the core of their business. Being inspired by a design to create something new is one thing, but COPYING an interface and offering functionality similar to a premium product for free is STEALING. It’s stealing because it robs 37signals of potential customers, which takes money from their pockets.

I agree whole heartedly. If the business operates with integrity and has a great product we need to support that business. Look at what Walmart has done to small town business when consumers balked at the higher prices of small shops and supported the cheap competition. I say put your money where your values are and help good people create good services.

if basecamp had made this plugin for wordpress and if it would have the functions i need i would have bought it… so no offence but there IS a differnce. but i know not everyone is like me…

regardless of this tareq did a good work here… and if thosw guys over at basecamp are afraid that some single person can “steal” their idea and make it better… well there might be a reason for this. and they should be afraid 😉

Building on successful ideas is the proper way of open source. Just as Linux was a clone of the main concepts of Unix, this has ideas from Basecamp.

Basecamp is cool but its far from perfect. By doing this as an open source project it gives people the opportunity to fork and improve. Basecamp has a great UI, but lacks a lot of features. For our own part we’re looking for something in between Jira and Basecamp, and this might just be it – if we improve upon it with a little of our own ideas.

This isn’t stealing because they are standing on the shoulders of Basecamp and jumping higher. Why not have PM software built into WP? Personally I would buy this from Basecamp solely so clients can log into wordpress more often. This functionality is genius and I’m sending the developer money to keep it going. It’s not like loading a rom onto an iPad because the rom hasn’t been modified to work with that hardware, this works with WP so it’s new.

Again, the problem is that the team at 37 Signals invested time and money into developing Basecamp. It’s not like they open sourced their code; someone came along and ripped off their UI. 37 Signals is a for-profit company, and those profits depend on people subscribing to their services. By offering similar functionality based on their research and development for free (and luring users like @jmstudio above), you are in fact stealing from them—not just IP, but actual revenue as well.

If you want to stand on the shoulders of someone and build something greater, that’s fine, but only if they consent to their work being used in that manner. AFAIK, 37 Signals has not given this consent with regard to Basecamp.